May 4th, 2018
STARTER
Food as Conversation by Kate Ducker
Dank clotted dew, muggy moist humid sticky slippy purple oozing. Creamy syrup rubber fog, clammy clouds thick sopping. Aqueous Slimy pink drip. Soggy mist teeming soused slush bubble steam.
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MAINS
We are what we eat: Food as Culture by Laura Copsey
We all have appetites and we have always been hungry. Hungry in the past, hungry in the present and hungry into the future as civilisations fall, regimes change and Pompey wins a football match. Our appetites unite us as we chomp forwards in time, wherever we are from, whatever we eat.
A national cuisine or a local delicacy may be misunderstood by “outsiders” - marking out friend or foe in a highly complex web of etiquette, status and identity. We may find we are what we eat. Edible collective memories and traditions as rituals of place and belonging. Team Culture were united on this from the start:
Give Peaz (Pudding) a chance… we all tried.
“Fruitcake with cheese?” / “A crime against fruitcake”/ “Without the cheese, you may as well just throw the cake away.” / …The debate raged on.
Welsh Cakes served with matching tattoo and sing song accent.
Curry. Just Curry.
Hot Cross Buns - “has anyone been to that old pub in Bromley-by-Bow called The Widow’s Son?” (google it)
With this in mind we began to research the heritage of Shepherd’s Bush and found there can be lot in a name. Using this as a premise we devised a three course Shepherds Bush Taster Menu intended to represent significant moments in the history of the area surrounding the RCA White City Campus.
Shepherds Bush Taster Menu
First Course: Lamb, vegetables, hay, bread and mead.
The bush pruned by the shepherds for shelter on route to market may have been a Hawthorne. Vague misremembered records of this ancient tradition are long forgotten but recalled in a name - Shepherd’s Bush from a time when the west London suburb was sprawling fields of grazing livestock being herded to Smithfields.
Second Course: Salt baked carrots -preserved for sea voyage. A snow refrigerator.
Half a mile up the road, later in time, the Franco-British Exhibition centre grew from up from the pasture. A gaudy imperial show stopper designed to hammer home the imperial power of the British Empire and the superiority of ‘whiteness’ at a time when power was beginning to wane. White City - it’s name recalling the blank facades of the “Avenue of the Colonies’ which gradually lost relevance and was demolished to make way for the council housing now lining Commonweath Avenue, India Way, South Africa Road.
Third Course: three large fries (burger king), ketchup, BBQ sauce, salt and coca cola
And then there’s Westfield Shopping Centre. So huge it can be seen from the international space station. I don’t have time to write anything more. L8R XOXO
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PUDDING
Food as Performance by Richard Wilkins
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24 Hour Food Party was an overnight White City project, culminating in a 3 course meal. Each group explored a different approach to food as practice with dishes lovingly prepared onsite with ingredients from Sheperds Bush Market.
Starter by food as conversation—Kate Ducker, Rachel Sale, Sara Jamshidi and Cerise Day
Mains by food as culture—Emily Evans, Jake Tollady, Laura Copsey, Eugene Noble and Becca Collins
Pudding by food as performance—Richard Wilkins, Sandra Sordini and Marco Zifaro
Kate is a 2nd year Visual Communication student.
Laura is a interdisciplinary and collaborative artist with an interest in history, traces and narrative. Her work often draws attention to the grey area between what is real and what is imagined, via objects and situations.
Richard is a 2nd year Visual Communication student.
food
place
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